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Contemporary Music Review


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Rhythm as motion discovered


a
Javier Alvarez
a
Department of Music , The City University ,
London, UK
Published online: 24 Aug 2009.

To cite this article: Javier Alvarez (1989) Rhythm as motion discovered,


Contemporary Music Review, 3:1, 203-231, DOI: 10.1080/07494468900640141

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Contemporary Music Review 9 1989 Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH
1989, Vol. 3 pp. 203-231 Printed in the United Kingdom
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Rhythm as motion discovered


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Javier Alvarez
Department of Music, The City University, London, UK

"Rhythm as motion discovered" is divided into three parts that discuss some of the author's
current compositional ideas. The first part has two themes: firstly, the relation between
language and material and the privileged position of the electroacoustic composer in his
dealings with musical material as a sonic craftsman. Secondly, that meaning in musical
language is in fact a 'discovery" of satisfactory relations between the motion of musical
structures and physical human experience and suggests that by 'discovering' this relation
the listener engaged in the apprehension of musical form. The second part of this paper
describes how the author's compositional work has stemmed from the perspective of
rhythm proposing that rhythmic structures are perhaps the strongest and most crucial
references in music. Concepts such as repetition, rhythmic objects, and their transformation
in the context of recent works (namely Caracteristicasand Temazcal)are analysed. In the third
and final section musical time, structure and rhythmic objects are discussed in terms of the
techniques and procedures described previously and in the context of the work Papalotl.
Finally, it is proposed that motion can be thought of as a rhythm of rhythms, and that by
shaping motion in the aural experience the composer can in fact articulate musical time and
form in a way that has a poetic meaning to the listener.

KEYWORDS composition, language, materials, motion, musical time, rhythm,


repetition, structure.

Materials, language and musical behaviour


9 . . it will in Time be that he will discover the path, disentangle his face, speak
and vomit what he has swallowed and free himself from his dreams.
The Book of Chilam-Balam

S i n c e m y first i n c u r s i o n i n t o t h e f i e l d of e l e c t r o a c o u s t i c m u s i c , I h a v e b e e n
t h r i l l e d to d i s c o v e r i n t h e m e t h o d o f w o r k i m m e n s e s i m i l a r i t i e s w i t h
O r i g a m i , t h e J a p a n e s e a r t of p a p e r f o l d i n g w h i c h I h a v e b e e n p r a c t i c i n g
n o w for n e a r l y f i f t e e n y e a r s . T h i s s i m i l a r i t y is r e l e v a n t to m y w o r k : h e r e I
h a v e t w o a c t i v i t i e s in w h i c h l a n g u a g e a n d m a t e r i a l s a r e m a g i c a l l y b o u n d
t o g e t h e r , w h e r e i n v e n t i o n is experienced as it is being produced, a n d
l a n g u a g e u n f o l d s as it is invented. A s s o m e o n e w h o is h i g h l y s u s p i c i o u s o f
recipes, I have found working in electroacoustics and with computers a
l i b e r a t i n g e x p e r i e n c e i n m y m u s i c a l e x p l o r a t i o n s . N o d o u b t , all s o r t s o f
203
204 JavierAlvarez

composers bear witness to the difficulties in articulating a musical


language, particularly in a time of great stylistic diversity, but I believe
that the electroacoustic composer is specially privileged in that he gets
immediate aural feedback on his work. In a similar way to a concert
performer, one is here in a position where one's "technique" and "sound"
are constantly reformulated as a result of what one hears coming out of
one's "instrument". But in the private world of the electroacoustic music
composer, this has a more far reaching effect. It is not only the act of
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subjecting a given technique to aural judgement, but more important,


questioning one's own thought processes, preconceptions and materials
as they impinge on one's perception. Furthermore, perception itself is
gradually broadened as a result of this active way of listening. Anyone
who has worked with computers will recognize the effectiveness of this
feedback/feedforward loop. This, I propose, undoubtedly reflects on the
rigour with which one chooses and organizes one's material.
I therefore believe that the nature of this working method -the
composer's "musical behaviour"- determines to a large extent how he
articulates large structures and musical form. Any discussion on the
structuring of art is virtually impossible without constantly referring to
the interplay between the composer's methodology and perception, his
material and language 1. In Origami, to come back to my opening
suggestion, each fold on the square piece of paper brings out a number of
consequences, both in relation to the original material itself, to the way in
which new folds are suggested or could be executed and to the predicted
overall formal result. As in music the material is not necessarily so
restricted, the consequences of manipulating material and the continuity
of how this is precisely done are even more crucial in articulating form.
The writer Jorge Luis Borges has pointed out that 'a language is a
tradition, a way of feeling reality, not and arbitrary repertoire of symbols'.
(Borges, 1972, p. 1081). If one imagines for a moment that a working
method is like a tool box then language can be thought of as being what
we construct with the those tools. Language does not possess a fixed
identity, it changes as we change. Language in art is something
essentially personal, founded on a collection of images of the world
around us, on our idiosyncracies, ideologies, rituals, and on the dreams
and projections of what we repress. Through these we discover the world
and reveal ourselves to others. Musical language emerges when these
external and internal images are lured into sonic specificity by the utensils
that one acquires in one's musical experience. To draw an anology with
Borges's words, the reality for the electroacoustic music composer is that
of the studio environment, and the symbols are the sound objects chosen
from the sonic continuum. Musical language is both the sound and the
sense which the composer intuitively sculpts out of this multidimensional
environment. Musical language in sonic terms is invented as one 'feels'
one's way through this reality. In saying this I am not implying the
supremacy of intuition or a rejection of a rationale behind the act of
composition. I am rather suggesting that for me a meaningful musical
Rhythm as motion discovered 205

language cannot rely on its conventional aspects, that it cannot simply be


constructed from an arbitrary choice of materials (pre-reality), as in most
European formalist and notational traditions (with respect to which I
have always felt a foreigner) but on the discovery of how 'possible' and
even unrelated sound objects actually behave in space and time and h o w
forces can be articulated with them in music. In Origami, folds play a
similar role; they are the source and the instigators of form. In sound,
however, this is only verifiable as an aural experience. This is why, in this
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sense, for me, composition is a practice; the praxis of discovering the


musicality inherent in any sonic experience. If meaning is a result of
communication, then language is not about discovering a way to
invention but about inventing a way to discovery.

Rhythm as a starting point


In opposition perhaps to many approaches to composition mine has
always been focused around one of the more basic aspects of music:
rhythm. My earliest musical experience was through dance. Since then I
have been fascinated by motion in music; in later practice this has become
the starting point of most of my explorations into musical dimensions,
just as the blank piece of paper is to the practice of Origami. This has
obviously had a bearing on my attitude towards formal design in that in
many of my works the organization of formal elements stems from the
articulation of initial rhythmic ideas. Pitch and timbre end up being
organized as the 'collide' with rhythmic structures. But before I describe
my approach to dynamic musical forces and form I will begin with some
general observations that illustrate my point of departure.
In most Western art the articulation of form has been rooted in the
concepts of symmetry and balance. Western music too, has in many ways
inherited this conceptual framework. Historically this has been operative
mainly in the realm of pitch organization models, from medieval modality
through tonality up to the twelve tone and total serial systems. As far as
rhythm is concerned the implications have been more a consequence of
the organization of pitch. I am specifically thinking of instances like the
'rules of thumb' of classical counterpoint and harmony (where rhythm
follows the contour of harmonic functionality) or the abstracted
hierarchisation of rhythm in terms of durations 2 and avoidance of literal
repetition in the compositional strategies of recent years. But we must not
forget that in listening to any music, as in the appreciation of other
discursive arts, form is gradually apprehended as time passes and not as
a 'one shot' experience as in the static visual arts or architecture. Musical
form is in fact shaped within the dynamic perceptual process of our
psychological state and memory. What we hear and forget and what we
project in the unknown future is only meaningful in experiental time. It is
from this viewpoint that abstracted notions such as symmetry in
composition seem so foreign: h o w can symmetry be perceived objectively
206 JavierAlvarez

when measurable chronometric time and unmeasurable experiental time


cannot be simultaneously experienced? As far as rhythm is concerned,
the concept of form based on notions of duration suffers from the same
weakness in that durations can only be experienced comparatively, that is
in relation to preceding and successive durations. It might all be
notationally sensible (and indeed marketable from a publisher's point of
view!). But it would be naive to pretend that our perception processes all
durations in a complex piece of music and that we are able to trace the
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formal symmetries which such music is supposed to articulate. Our


appreciation of temporal structures is determined by the limits of what we
can represent in memory and what we can physically "resonate" to. As
far as purely temporal structures are concerned, 'time durations' apply to
long (in a chronometrical sense as well) events. Because of this
characteristic, they are not immediately quantifiable items: even the
educated listener has a hard time relating durations adjacent to the one he
is currently perceiving! Notions such as symmetry and balance, while
clearly seen on the printed page, are not aurally operative in music where
elements are not able to serve each other element as context. This
referential aspect is a crucial factor for any network to be semantically
"meaningful". I tend to believe that other formal/temporal references
such as pulse, repetition, and rhythmic objects (discussed below) must be
reconsidered if we are to free our esthetical experience from the tyranny
of the worn-out formalist and abstracted norms of Western music.
Furthermore, the formidable potential of the electroacoustic music
medium is a clear invitation to do so especially when many non- Western
musical sources and ideas still remain un-examined. In this article, I shall
discuss some of my approaches to the use of such references hoping that
these may serve as suggestive alternatives.

Rhythm, discovery, motion and meaning


In conventional textbook definitions (for example Cooper & Meyer 1966,
or Apel, 1972) rhythm has been typically described in terms of 'beats',
'regular patterns', 'meter' etc. Again, the challenge comes when we
consider that these neat definitions apply to musical time as notated and
not as the actual sound experience. The limitation of this approach becomes
more evident when, in working with computers, one realizes that sound
objects very often embody time periods other than simple ratios, or
metrical and chronometric measurements. Such conceptions tend to
reinforce a lattice based idea of temporal relations rather than dealing
with motion in terms of shape, behaviour and physical response as in
dance. Although I shall not discuss it here, this is just one of the problems
brought by Western musical notation, most particularly in the last twenty
years-.
I mentioned before that rhythmic motion has been the starting point in
my musical experience and I would like now to qualify this. This notion is
Rhythm as motion discovered 207

closely related to the idea of discovery outlined above in relation to musical


language. I will suggest here that rhythmic structures constitute perhaps
the strongest temporal references by which motion is discovered by the
listener, and by which dynamic musical gestures can be constructed.
Motion is the meaning of rhythm. Motion can after all be understood as an
e m e r g e n t property of physical gesture. In this sense, m y notion of
'rhythm' is holistic. By 'rhythm' I am implying the collection of all such
discrete, aurally identifiable gestures. In this collection-continuum which
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I shall call the rhythm palette, I include all temporal structures ranging from
simple pulses to complex statistical structures. (See Figure 1).

statistical . ~
structures

silence
/
I j
pulse

ii ,,F /
~ ~ motion

Figure I The Rhythm pallette.

The rhythmic object


Within this rhythm palette, my interest has been drawn to experiment
with rhythmic objects. As with the concept of sound object (well known to
electroacoustic music) so the idea of rhythmic object here implies a short
entity with very clear characteristics, such that at subsequent hearing, the
object can still be recognized as being the same. Because of the mobility
inherent in any sound object, rhythmic objects can only be grasped in
terms of the correlative elements that inhabit them. As such rhythmic
objects are usually the synthesis of two global aspects. Firstly, they are
made up of the relations between accented and unaccented parts.

C.M,R 3'I J
208 JavierAlvarez

'Accent' here has not a speculative meaning: accent is in itself an objective


phenomenon and has an organizing function which is aurally verifiable
through differentiation of timbre, length or dynamics. Secondly, there is
a timbral character and spectral trajectory inherent in all rhythmic objects.
The interaction of these two global aspects determines the shape and
behaviour of a rhythmic object and its implied motion. Depending on
which of these two aspects predominate, the rhythmic object will either
be closer to a purely pulsed rhythmic cell pattern or to the more familiar
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idea of a sound object4 (see Figure 2).


It has always seemed to me that sound objects behave in a way very
similar to natural events. Repetition is an essential part of nature and life
in its cyclic eventualities: photosynthesis, day and night, sex, work,
sleep, life and d e a t h . . , etc. Within the framework of all such natural-to-
cosmic repetitions we apprehend and differentiate the uniqueness and
singularity of the events in our life. In Gilles Deleuze's words:
'if repetition exists, it expresses a singularity against the general, an
extraordinary against the ordinary, an instantaneity against variation, an
eternity against permanence. In all aspects, repetition is transgression. It
questions the law, denounces its nominal and general character in search of a
deeper and more artistic reality.
(Deleuze, 1986 pp. 9-10)
Since my first experiences with rhythmic objects, it has seemed very
natural, if sound objects were short, self contained events, to articulate
them into larger phrases and up to a large structural status by means of
repetition. Whilst the uniqueness of the object is preserved, the larger
structures (objects of objects) are imbued with its original characteristics.
This always provides a great number of choices and possibilities which I
have explored in my recent works.

Repetition and pulse


One of the most important consequences of using repetition in sound is
the generation of the most basic grouping of events: pulse. A pulse can be
thought of as a chain of events or 'points' that are perceived as being
equally spaced in (musical) time. The features of pulse are its period, or the
perceived interval between the events and phase, or the actual time at
which any particular event is perceived relative to some reference time.
All pulses are potentially infinite series, but in the limited context of a
rhythmic object, pulse is inferred within the boundaries of the object. In
the case of repeated rhythmic objects, which already contain a strong
pulsating energy, the results can be extremely rich and compositionally
suggestive. When a rhythmic object is repeated two sorts of pulse start
emerging together: a global pulse related to the pulse and period of the
repetition and a local pulse manifest in the phase and period of the object
itself (Figure 3); I shall come back to this.
Rhythm as motion discovered 209

r
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i 9 r r y T v T r

3ec 1 2 3 4 5; 6

rhgthmic object with dlscontlnuou$ accented shape


~81ience~J and internal psttern grouplng predominant
over tl mbr81 feature,.

I T T I T T T T T ! r f I

~eC 1 2 3 4 5 6

rhgthm;c i sound object ~dth cont~ nuou$ un-accented shape


tlmbral (hracterl-3:Ics and spectraJ traJectorg predomlnant
over salient feature~.

Figure 2 The sound and rhythmic objects.


210 JavierAlvarez

>
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Local pulse I I I I I I I I I
relatlve to
internal shape)

Global pulse
fl r'eD?~ v'e to ~ e
I I

Figure 3 Repetition of a rhythmic object: global and local pulse.

Just precisely how the p h e n o m e n o n of pulse is inferred has been


discussed in some detail by psychoacousticians and psychologists ~. From
my practical experience I have come to the conclusion that a pulse 'point'
emerges by the existence of two accented events. The period and phase of
the successive pulse points is determined by the temporal position of the
accented events. This is assumed in this article. Pulse is invariably
meaningful for the listener in that it serves him as a reference onto which
motion is mapped. I therefore like to think of pulse as a sort of reflection of
repetition. In dealing with repetition we are implicitly articulating pulse
and motion.

Rhythmic objects and variation


Among my ftrst attempts to use repetition to articulate larger musical
structures was my work Caracteristicas (1982) for flute, oboe, cello and
piano. In this work, I initially started by pairing each instrument with
specific rhythm objects of different characteristics (hence the title). I also
Rhythm as motion discovered 211

established a meeting point - an axis - between the repetition of selected


rhythmic objects and the 'breaking up' of the inner design of the objects.
In this particular case I wanted to elucidate motion in the music by
moving between periodic and aperiodic gestures, so simple additive
repetition preceded or followed by segments of free variation (or
'breaking up') seemed effectively appropriate. (See Figure 4). To digress
slightly, I like to think of this opposition as an analogy (in terms of timbre)
to harmonicity and inharmonicity. The repeated object corresponds to a
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harmonic area, its breaking up to an inharmonic one. In fact, in


Caracteristicas, repetition was frequently paired instrumentally with clear
harmonic contours, while departures from repetition were paired either
to harmonic ambiguity or to inharmonic instrumental sounds, such as
multiphonics. The opposite pairing is also present in the piece. At the
level of motion the results were meaningful: when the harmonic/
inharmonic axis was paired with repetition/variation, pulse (which was
easily inferred from repetition) acted as a stable rhythmic state close to
pure pulse, but as soon as the object was broken up the movement
became thrust forward in search of a new "harmonic" area of repetition.
When the opposite pairing up was effected, inferred pulses were unstable
and any variation would deflate the expected sense of motion. This
general principle was made operative both at the level of each single line
and of the ensemble as a whole, so, to an extent, the motion of the piece is
the result of a polyphony of pulses and of their harmonic shapes. But, in
terms of timbral and harmonic motion, these become primarily organized
as they 'encounter' repetition. The dynamic between these dimensions
and repetition, relative to their interaction, is what was described before
as 'collision'.
The use of this pairing up of dimensions, and the 'collision' between
the two or more distinct elements gives repetition an entirely new
meaning. Its role becomes strongly referential as the listener is able to
apprehend changes that occur within the objects themselves. This is in
preference to its more familiar literal role. Precisely because repetition
provides us with schemeta onto which our memory latches (through
pattern and grouping) the smallest inner variation or transformation of a
rhythmic object within it becomes highly significant in our perception of
how musical time passes. But the relation is dialectical in that change in
the objects also give us a reference to the internal dynamism of the
repetition itself. When the objects change gradually, repetition ceases to
be mere re-articulation, approaching more and more a continuous stream
analogous to a succession of frames in film. Another analogy which might
be useful in further clarifying this idea can be found in the perception of
movement under stroboscopic lights. When watching an actor under a
stroboscopic light, for example, an unchanged and predictable action on
his part will end up centering our attention on the strobe itself and its rate
of change. But when the action is varied, we cease to focus on the on/off
framework and focus on the action itself. We attempt to reconstruct the
action as we watch intently: a sense of motion emerges, relative to the rate
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212
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213
214 JavierAlvarez

of the stroboscopic light. In fact, when watching actors under strobes,


slow movements will seem even slower, and fast ones will actually seem
a lot faster. Under these conditions, our whole sense of speed is easily led
in one way or another, and most significant to our discussion, our
temporal and spatial perception is modified.
In sound these changes can happen, in respect to repetition, in any
musical dimension with similar dynamic effect. For instance, as an
unchanging short object is repeated, our interest in its timbre is minimal
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and we will eventually be drawn towards the globality of the repetition


itself. In any case, only if the repetition becomes fast enough (above
18-20Hz) will its timbre contour fuse into a harmonic 'field' related to the
frequency of the repetition. But if its timbre contour changes as the object
is being repeated, then repetition itself moves into the background and
the timbral trajectory is discerned as such. If the frequency of the
repetition is fast then the change will be perceived as a gesture. Similar
processes operate in the area of harmonic content or the accent contour of
the objects. This is basically an expansion of the local/global pulse idea,
but for timbral and harmonic processes to be operative, repetition must
have a frequency in the audio range. For objects with salient accented
features repetition above about 16Hz will produce partial frequencies
related both to the period and phase of the accents (or other salient
features) in the original object and to the frequency of the repetition itself.
This was the principle used in Papalotl (1987) for piano and tape to
generate gestures and rhytmic objects from short percussive pitched
sounds which I will describe in more detail later. At this scale of audio
change and repetition, it is therefore possible to think of dynamic
morphologies based on interpolations between rhythmic objects and
timbre, between timbre and rhythmic objects, between rhythmic objects
and harmonic fields etc., as 'collisons' between dimensions of the sonic
continuum. I shall presently examine some of my attempts at variation
and transformation of rhythmic objects under repetition in the context of
purely traditional (non-digital) studio techniques in my work Temazcal
(1984) for amplified maracas and tape.
In Temazcal most of the material of the maracas is drawn from
traditional rhythmic ideas found in a large number of Latin American folk
musics (Figure 5). Because the maracas have a limited timbre (basically
noise-based), its objects are primarily rhythmic cell patterns (according to
the terminology outlined above) which are juxtaposed against the
rhythmic/sound objects on tape and utilized timbrally to supply the high
frequencies of the total spectrum of the work. Variation in the maracas
part is mainly achieved by a process which works in the following way.
Each short section in the work is headed with a main pattern, which
contains two or three secondary patterns (see Figure 6). The player
responds to the pulse and objects on tape by repeating and/or chaining
these cells and repeated patterns together in any order, thus obtaining
larger pattern strands. Different performers have come up with diverse
strategies to put these together-- the solutions have been very suggestive
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0
215
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~tl, l
216

~B

m
~.
^
]~I

~:~ ~
i,I
~"

~~

-.o
~~ - o
".

cJ
~ ~'.~
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~
217
218 JavierAlvarez

-TW-~, ~ '; F.. ' P, ~ ~" P~ .... " PuI r p,,


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_,FD'9 ~' ~,.r~, r ,1=! ,.v~,..i=!. ~,, ~s' ,,

'7. 1:: '~'~.r=i 's'P,' s"@'~,F,,"

Figure 7 Example of resultant patterns in performance of Temazcal.

in regards to how this kind of material can be developed (see Figure 7). In
each section, the complexity of the strands is thereafter left to the player
and result from his reactions to the motions suggested to him by the
pulses on tape. This is ~esthetically very attractive to me, in two senses.
Firstly, in that the performer must, by the very nature of the work, engage
in active listening, and almost dance in order to pull the piece together.
Secondly, this simple approach breaks away from the concept of the tape
as a straight-jacket: in Temazcal it is possible to interpret freely the
suggested material, but, even under these apparently loose conditions,
synchronisation points invariably remain extremely accurate while the
response to the material on tape remains seemingly personal.

I.,~ > > > T,


.> 9

Figure 8 Seminal rhythmic object in Temazcal (tape part).


Rhythm as motion discovered 219

With regards to the rhythmic objects on tape, the variations and


transformations deal with similar but more complex ideas. The first is
concerned with the concept of rhythmic transformation of a basic
rhythmic object (Figure 8). The sound object itself was physically
produced with two bamboo wooden rods and recorded in the studio. The
transformational process it underwent is based on the concept of
'collision' outlined above between a) the local pulse of the rhythmic object
b) the global pulse emergent from its continuous repetition against c) the
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frequency of an amplitude modulating square wave (a type of repetition


at sub-audio frequency). The whole process is described below. In the
first place, extended material was generated by repeating (looping in
musique co,ncr~te terms) the basic rhythmic object. The phase trajectory of
the object s local pulse points was approximately 1.75 to 2.0Hz (MM ~ =
80 to 120 in the notated score). The global pulse points (repetition rate)
ocurred with a period of 0.33Hz (or every 3 seconds approximately). By
amplitude modulating this material with a square wave whose frequency
evolved from 12Hz to 20Hz (this was simultaneously frequency-
modulated by a very slow 0.33Hz sine wave) a great amount of new
material rich in saliences emerged. By varying the frequency of the slow
sine wave (analogous to the rate of the stroboscopic light) or the speed of
the repeated material (analogous to the speed and shape of the action of
the actor) further inner motions and resultant rhythmic objects were
sculpted. (Figure 9). In this sense, many of the objects present in Temazcal
can be thought of as contracted versions of the kind of process described
above, and the rhythmic processes as expanded versions of the objects
themselves.

116 > .,w

Figure 9 Resulting patterns after transformations.


220 JavierAlvarez

Rhythmic objects and rhythmic processes


The second idea stems colaterally from the relation between object and
process. If process is thought of as an expanded version of the object, then
we can generally speculate that the rhythmic object can be revealed to us
in different ways by its scale. In zooming in and out of scale (achieved by
'speeding' up or down, in tape transposition terms, for example) it is
possible to perceive the same event as an instantaneous gesture by the
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effect of great contraction or as a vast sonic landscape by the effect of


extraordinary magnification. This is something that stems from well
known sound recording techniques and which has enormous
implications in articulating the dynamic structures typically found in
electroacoustic music and cinema. Moreover, it is only from this large
scale perspective that the concept of time duration acquires syntactic
significance for me. In other words, durations serve only to describe the
larger perceptual dimension of sonic landscapes, but they themselves do
not articulate the singularity of rhythmic structures other than as
chronometrical quantifiers of discrete events. Durations in this sense are
comparable to sub-audio frequencies, far too large to have perceptual
significance. As far as Temazcal is concerned, the spatial magnitude idea is
used consistently in instances such as the appearance of material
generated from the harp as a source, both as a texture (repeated and
'speeded up' to six times of the original) and as the real object-harp at the
end with all its anecdotal and extra-musical connotations. But in a more
global and poetic way, the piece is permeated with the idea that the tape
part enacts the life of some kind of 'gigantic maraca' inside which the
listener sits and feels the movement and resonance of the beads as they
hit the inner walls of the magnified instrument. The concept of spatial
magnitude has great poetic potential and is particularly idiomatic t o
electroacoustic materials. For this reason extremely mobile structures
such as sound objects offer a quasi-organic physical and perceptual
environment from which entire works and indeed musical architectures
can be constructed. At the compositional level, it suggests multiple
possibilities - - within this continuum of contraction and dilation of sound
objects - - of creating clear dynamic forces which effectively shape motion
and help further to articulate musical time.

Musical time and structure


Musical time is irreversible. In listening to music, our experience has a
clear cut phenomenological frame: a beginning and an end. Trevor
Wishart has clearly expressed this uni-directionality of the musical
experience:
'In sound, the musical experience begins at the beginning and must be taken in
the (irreversible) order and at the rate at which it comes to the listener.
Furthermore, our experience of what arrives later is modified by our (perhaps
Rhythm as motion discovered 221

inaccurate) memories of what has passed, and in this sense there can never be a
clear cut "recapitulation" "
(Wishart, 1985 p. 23).
I have always felt that to invent music is to a great extent to invent some
kind of living organism. In inventing music, the composer is also creating
a temporal entity which reflects in the listener. Just as pulse is a reflection
of repetition, so is musical time a poetic reflection of an objective musical
sonic experience. In fact, one could say that musical time if the life-span of
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such an invention. In this sense, the clearer the referential framework of a


piece of music received by the listener, the fuller will be his apprehension
of its musical time. Although the composer cannot control h o w the
listener will react and modify his perception, he is in a position to alter the
flow of referential 'clues' presented to the listener and by that token
modify the listener's engagement in the discovery of musical meaning.
This, I believe, is crucial in articulating structure in musical discourse.

The relationship b e t w e e n rhythm and structure: the r h y t h m


of r h y t h m s

So far, I have spoken of rhythm as a local structure, in terms of rhythmic


objects, pulse, and repetition. But perception is a chain of information,
built of synthesis, memory, comparison and premonition. In terms of
dynamic structures, as listeners we travel, going back to my earlier
analogy, between the stroboscopic light itself and the result of applying
the stroboscopic light onto other actions, establishing relations between
the details and the globality of motion and shapes. If I am attracted by
simple rhythmic entities such as rhythmic objects it is because they
provide the possibility of constantly establishing links between events
which are in themselves complex, and thus establishing a flow of
information which will guide the listeners' sense of musical temporality.
In this respect I dream of pieces that will (chronometrically) last, say, 3
hours, but will 'feel' (perceptually) like 3 m i n u t e s . . . And because I
believe that communication is a pre-condition of musical language, I find
it absolutely necessary for the composer to control the flow of information
by creating motion between events of great complexity (where only the
globality of the discourse is important) and those of great simplicity
(where the discourse is stripped down to its bare essentials). This
travelling between "entropy" and 'primeval pulse' is what I see as the basis
of dynamic musical structure. Both modernist 'complexity' or minimalist
styles, regardless of their philosophical justifications, suffer from a lack of
structural dynamism precisely because they rely, at the extreme, on one
basic undifferentiated flow of information. In these instances, the
educated listener will limit himself either to a statistical perception of
generalities, or to the foreseeable predictability of local events. It is ironic,
that in both cases, although for apparently different reasons, the
listener's perception is reduced to an unengaged simplistic level. As
222 JavierAlvarez

musical structure can only be evaluated in the aural experience, it is not


surprising that musics fabricated on paper calculations can often result in
structurally bland and often shapeless entities, incapable of projecting a
clear temporal identity in the ears of the listener. As has been pointed out,
in dealing with complexity and simplicity in music, temporal contexts
cannot be ignored 6.
For this reason, dynamic musical structures only emerge when the
music engages in motion between the complex and the simple, precisely
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because motion defines a perceptual framework for the apprehension of


timbre, shape, dynamics and musical time. Therefore, in a more global
sense than I have spoken before, motion at this level can be thought of as
the essence of dynamic structure, a rhythm of rhythms of poetical content.
In my work Papalotl (1987) for piano and tape, I have attempted to put
into practice some of the ideas that I have outlined above, particularly
with regards to creating an ever moving organism. The idea that
permeates the work is that of a sort of rhythmic trompe l'oeil, effected by a
constant shift between the periodic and aperiodic pulses implied by the
rhythmic cell patterns used. It was my idea to create a work where the
listener was constantly struggling to understand simple pulses, yet never
entirely fulfilling his desire. Imagine for a moment that you are trying to
dance a waltz and as soon as you are in step, the music is changed to a
polka, and as soon as you've readjusted a faster waltz appears, and so
o n . . . This, in dance, is an exhilarating experience, one in which you're
always about to loose your balance, one in which listening becomes of
vital importance, one where keeping your balance is the poetics of
movement. In Papalotl, it is the incessant shifting of the pulses which
constitute the piece's most important structural identity (see Figure 10).

l}/A. |1 ~..

J J J J !

Figure 11 Typical rhythmic object in Papalotl.


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Si
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o
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224

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~
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226
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9
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228 JavierAlvarez

More to the point, however, in Papalotl I have used nearly two hundred
rhythmic objects (see Figure 11 for a typical example) which are used as
the building blocks for the piano and the computer parts. These have
been combined and added to construct larger strands of music. The piano
part consists mainly of chords playing the patterns. As far as these are
concerned, their transformation results mainly from simple operations.
These include the following: a) simple addition b) addition of a cell to half
of its preceding one c) alternation of these two procedures d) repetition of
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the above and e) prolations (see Figure 12). Whilst the basic time unit
(MM #/~= 528) nearly always remains constant, the pulses implied by the
known medieval principle of talea and color. By the additional operations
on the rhythmic patterns, new talea are generated, and out of their
varying relation with the actual pitches in the piano part, pulse points are
made to emerge at harmonically significant points. Chord sequences are
also subjected to the processes of addition described above for the
rhythmic cells, so both the talea and the color are changing incessantly
throughout the work. Furthermore, pulse variation is achieved by
rhythmic modulation applied to the resultant color, while the resultant
talea are left unaltered.
The computer part of Papalotl was built of note type sounds from the
inside resonances of a piano which were sampled on a Fairlight Computer
Music Instrument Series II. Because the samples were short, repetition
became the basic procedure to extend them into full-bodied objects. The
choice of material, however, was not haphazard: through it the computer
becomes a sort of disembodied piano which, in spite of its abstracted
presence, retains a perceptual link with the listener. The relation between
this material and the piano's was further elaborated by using the same
patterns in both parts to determine their transformations. (ie. rate of
repetitions, movements of the filter, length of resonances, speed of the
attack, etc.). In the computer part, all the control parameters, induding
phasing, echoes and reverberation were entirely programmed
maintaining the same pattern shapes but activated at much higher
speeds, in frequencies usually related to the main harmonic centre of the
piano part at that particular moment. So for instance, when the piano part
is centered at around a c# region, the note objects and/or control
parameters were activated to repeat and resonate at harmonic frequencies
of 17.32Hz (c#0), 25.96Hz (g#0); 30.87Hz (b0) or 34.65Hz (c#1), etc.
Again, as in Caracteristicas, periodic repetition in the piano part was
paired with harmonic frequencies and aperiodic repetition with
inharmonic frequencies operating the control files and rates of repetition
of the sampled sounds. In spite of the fact that the piano and computer
parts are constantly being juxtaposed, this pairing up gives the work a
coherent resonance, and shapes the movement in both parts in a
characteristic way. Also, by this means, the piano provides the upper
partials of the entire spectral composition of the work, while the tape part
constantly touches upon fundamentals.
Finally in Papalotl, my most important goal was to compose a work
Rhythm as motion discovered 229

w h e r e motion could become structure, w h e r e m o v e m e n t was always


present, yet n e v e r grasped. It s e e m e d to me that the only possible w a y to
achieve this rhythm of rhythms was to be able to z o o m in and out of the
immediacy of its rhythmic percussive surface by creating a landscape, a
sort of magnification of all the m i n u t e processes which I have described
above. The tape 'solos' were therefore c o m p o s e d with this transition of
scale in mind. In this sense this work shares with m y previous Temazcal
the idea of recreating a 'giant' i n s t r u m e n t inside of which the p e r f o r m e r
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and listener alike experience the resonance, in this case, of the strings'

,5 ~
w8
~ ,t';.
'16
J ~ 7-3

2.
~1~

,,6~
16
JTJ~J--3 ~ I 3J'J. J J.
4

4. ,3J
14
J. J J..1 ,~J~ J" Y-'J-J ,
t4 '

. ,~ F - ~ F ' ~
18
,'~ j. j j..1
't6 '4

'4 I

Figure 12 Pattern transformations in Papalotl. Process of simple addition. 1.


Pattern a and b added together. 2. Addition of the first half of a to b (ab). 3. Pattern
ab and c added together. 4. Addition of the second half of ab to c (abc). 5. Addition
of a and b to abc.
230 JavierAlvarez

motion, becoming an ordinary piano of extraordinary power. As I said


before, w h a t is i m p o r t a n t to me, as a composer, about this motion within
an i n v e n t e d landscape is its poetic content, the compositional techniques
and p r o c e d u r e s being mere devices to communicate it.

To reinvent the aural tradition


The actual techniques e m p l o y e d were v e r y m u c h dictated b y the
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idiosyncracies of the Fairlight instrument. Papalotl is, in its entirety, the


result of composing in the studio, at the computer, piano part included.
The music was later transcribed into standard notation from the c o m p u t e r
files after the piece had b e e n completed.
This brings me back to m y o p e n i n g thoughts. Papalotl is essentially the
result of an aural compositional practice and as such, it corresponds
exactly to the ideas abstracted from the actual process of composition
itself. Indeed, as I look forward into the future, I believe that the aural
process available t h r o u g h electroacousfic techniques is of p a r a m o u n t
importance to musical composition, for its tools allow musical t h o u g h t to
acquire higher levels of abstraction and imaginative p o w e r which unveil
previously u n i m a g i n e d schemes, strategies and images. This, I am
certain, will lead us to the discovery of untried ways of listening and to the
invention of a n e w aural tradition.

Notes
1. This statement obviously implies the adoption of an aesthetic position. There is
a large amount of music produced today which assumes that structure is only
elucidated at the pre-compositional stage. This article assumes that structure
is mainly apprehended in the sonic experience. For further discussion of this
point see Simon Emmerson's The Relation of Language to Materials in The
Language of Electroacoustic Music. ed. S. Emmerson. London 1986. MacMillan
Press. pp. 17-40.
2. I am questioning here the abstracted notion of rhythm in terms of durations,
abstracted from (timbral and dynamic) shape: "Pitch and duration seem to me
to form the basis of a compositional dialectic, while intensity and timbre
belong to secondary categories". Pierre Boulez in Boulez on Music Today. Trans.
S. Bradshaw and R. Rodney Bennett. London 1971, Faber and Faber. p. 37.
3. The limitations of notation vis-/l-vis the multi-layered experience of music is far
more pronounced than this argument indicates. For a detailed discussion of
this matter see Trevor Wishart's Beyond the Pitch~DurationParadigm in On Sonic
Art. York 1985. pp 7-27.
4. For a detailed account of the morphology of sound objects see Denis Smalley's
Spectro-Morphology and Structuring Processes in The Language of Electroacoustic
Music. Ed. S. Emmerson, London 1986, MacMillan Press. pp. 61-97.
5. See, for instance, recent writings such as Richard Parncutt's The Perception of
Rhythm as motion discovered 231

Pulse in Musical Rhythm in Action and Perception in Rhythm and Music, ed. A.
Gabrielsson. Sweden 1987. The Royal Swedish Academy of Music, No. 55. pp.
127-137 and Stephen McAdams' Music: a science of the Mind? in Contemporary
Music Review, vol 2. London 1987. Harwood Academic Publishers.

References
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(anonymous-Mayan) El Libro del Chilam Balam. Mexico. Fondo de Cultura


Economica, 1957
Alvarez, Javier (1982) Caracteristicas. London 1982. Published by the composer on
Black Dog Editions, 23 Barrington Rd. London N8 8QT
Alvarez, Javier (1982) Temazcal. London 1984. Black Dog Editions
Alvarez, (1987) Papalotl. London 1987. Black Dog Editions
Borges, Jorge Luis. (1972) El Oro de los Tigres. In Obra Completas, Buenos Aires,
1974, Emece Editores. (reference trans, by J. Alvarez)
Cooper, Grovesnor W. and Meyer, Leonard (1960) The Rhythmic Structure of Music.
Chicago and London, 1960. The University of Chicago Press
Deleuze, Gilles. (1986) Difference et Repetition. Paris, France. Presses Universitaires
de France 1968. (Reference trans, by J. Alvarez)
Wishart, Trevor (1985) On Sonic Art. York. 1985. Published by the composer on
Imagineering Press, 83 Heslington Rd. York YO1 5AX, UK.

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